The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy. Brian Aldiss

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      ‘But she was so nice!’ Mother said several times afterwards, astonished that it should be so. ‘Do you think she’d like to come to tea one day?’

      It was cheering to know that Mother and Ann admired her (though what would they say if they guessed how I felt?). And it was cheering that Sister appeared not to notice the aroma of beer as she stood for a moment, small and individual, in our drawing-room before we left.

      The car proved to be, not a Rolls-Royce, not even a flashy little two-seater, but a battered old Ford. Sister said something about the other cars not being available. And we weren’t going back to Traven House. She felt like a drive to Grantham instead.

      None of that worried me in the slightest; I hardly heard what she said. The great triumph was to be with her, and in the holidays at that! I sat beside her blushing scarlet from head to navel; for I saw that she had not bothered to bring along any paints at all. On the back seat of the car were not sketching pads but cushions. Clear evidence she was going to drive me somewhere and seduce me!

      There I sat, feverishly clutching my own sketching block and paints, and now and again feeling the one French letter in my pocket – the remaining one of the two left over from the Esmeralda affair; I had used the other for tossing off into, and lent it out at school for the same purpose. Now the unused one was to be put to a real test, and I was scared at the prospect.

      To my relief and disappointment, Sister intended no seduction. We ate lunch together and strolled round gazing at the shops. We passed an Army Recruiting Centre; she put her arm through mine and asked, ‘Which service will you join if there’s a war against Germany?’

      We went to the cinema. I held her hand and nestled against her. And she responded! That night, safely home again, I bagged an old exercise book from Nelson and started what I boldly headed ‘A Virginia Journal’. It is before me now, my first essay in love, and two pages of immature handwriting are devoted just to the period in the pictures, when I had the joy of holding her hand.

      After the cinema we went for tea to a little teahouse that I uneasily felt did not befit an admiral’s daughter. There was nothing flashy about it at all. But she was entirely at ease, so sweet, so smiling, so easy to talk to. She poured my tea for me. I passed the cakes to her. Our table was in one corner, and there were three steps up from the rest of the café to the small room in which we sat.

      She told me tantalizingly little about herself; and it was a condition of my life that I could not ask, for fear of seeming rude (had I not always been told ‘It’s rude to ask questions’?).

      She had a big sister whom she adored. I forget her name now, but I know she could ride like the wind.

      What’s more, she – and Sister – rode in Africa. They had a great gaunt black Zulu as servant for the two sisters. His tongue had been cut out in childhood, and he always carried a spear, but the girls adored him. Their father loved Africa best of all the continents.

      She said why didn’t I call her Virginia in the holidays? She hoped we could meet again. I grasped the opportunity and asked her if we could meet again the next week. Well, she was going to have to go to London for a few days, but she’d drop me a note.

      I thought it was the brush-off. She clutched my hand under the table, drew it on to her knee, smiled lovingly at me, said that she really would write. ‘Don’t you believe I will?’

      ‘I do believe you will.’

      ‘Honestly I will, love. But I have to go up to London to appear in court – one of my best friends is involved in a divorce case, and I am a star witness.’

      ‘You lead such an exciting life, Virginia!’

      ‘Divorce is not exciting – it’s just cruel. What’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever done, Horatio?’

      I told her about the time Nelson and I had been chased by hornets at Hunstanton, and how we had jumped into the sea with all our clothes on to escape from them. Virginia and I both laughed greatly. She was wonderful company.

      When she drove me back to our front door, again the agony of crisis. I stared at her. She kissed me fleetingly, just brushing her lips against mine. ‘See you soon!’

      They asked to look at my sketches as I hurried up to my bedroom.

      ‘I left ’em at Traven Castle,’ I said.

      My last term at Branwells, although I did not know it then: Summer term, 1939. I thought I had another year to go and Higher School Cert before me. It was the only term I went back eagerly. I knew I was going to see Virginia.

      Our second meeting had miraculously come off. She had been as good as her darling word. We had done much as the first time, and had even managed a brief sort of half-cuddle and a long kiss before parting. Virginia had kissed me! Virginia Traven had kissed me!

      At Branwells she seemed only a little more distant, but I realized that if we were going to be lovers, then both sides must exercise caution.

      I was made prefect at the beginning of term. This gave me extra freedom. It meant that one could walk about the school on one’s own without being questioned, an unheard-of luxury. It also meant that one had a study of one’s own in what was called Prosser’s Row – a privilege that gave one many sexual advantages, although it is fair to say that few of the prefects took advantage of this, or not very often. We agreed that we were much more civilized than the louts who had been prefects when we arrived as new boys, so long, long before.

      Frank Richards was now put behind me. Greyfriars had palled at last. I had talked with Nelson and a friend of ours at home about socialism – somewhat to my surprise, they both declared themselves to be socialists – and Nelson was going out with a girl who called herself socialist (his engagement to Catharine had been broken off or, more accurately, had faded into thin air). I read all about socialism and the less boring bits of politics in the school library. I also happened on Keats and other poets – splendid fellows, I now discovered, who threw a few sidelights on what was happening between Virginia and me. In short, I was becoming civilized.

      I was also working hard for School Cert. All that nightmare, the outward climax of one’s school career, is so dead now that I have no intention of reviving it here. I passed it creditably, and that was the end of it. It was a bore at the time; it bores me now. Whereas Virginia still interests me.

      It should not be imagined that the favourite school interest was dead to me. The cess-pit was still on the boil, as one might say. I now had the pleasure of finding that Brown slept only a few beds away from me in the dorm – to Webster’s comic jealousy: ‘I’ll see they get you, old man, on that glorious day when the bloody revolution dawns!’

      Brown had his adventure to relate. He claimed that in the holidays the gardener caught him trying to toss the family chow off in the asparagus patch, and had taken him into the potting shed, there inducing him to try the same tactics on what Brown described as a very large Hampden indeed.

      Such tales, some true, some partially true, some wishful thinking, some downright lies, went the rounds at the start of every term; the lies sank and were forgotten, the truths survived and were welcome. Drury described how he had screwed his sister. We knew Drury screwed his sister; we had heard it from him before; he always came up with a wealth of detail, and there was not a boy did not envy him. Harper Junior claimed that his mother had got drunk and had sucked him off. We ignored Harper Junior.

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